


the end of all things

by indigoat



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Talos IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 16:03:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18577837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigoat/pseuds/indigoat
Summary: Chris knows he’s been sulking. He could have anything here, and yet he can’t even be bothered to make a change to the barren landscape of the planet that was to be his saving grace. Now it feels like a hell he’s been damned too.The first time Una and Chris see one another after Chris went to live on Talos IV.





	the end of all things

_"In these coming years many things will change, but the way I feel will remain the same..."_

Chris knows he’s been sulking. He could have anything here, and yet he can’t even be bothered to make a change to the barren landscape of the planet that was to be his saving grace. Now it feels like a hell he’s been damned too.

He tells himself he’s being stupid, reminds himself for what seems like the thousandth time that he’s goddamn lucky, that this is better than the alternative.

Isn’t it?

Chris knows pain. He knows loss and suffering and heart-stopping, gut-wrenching fear. That’s what life is, something he accepted a long time ago. And sure, being here, being able to talk and move his body is a miracle, but he has no one to talk to here, no one to press his body against. Is it better to suffer in reality or live peacefully in a world that is entirely illusory?

-

He is sitting outside the opening of the cave when a figure steps out from behind a large wall of rock and into the clearing, backlit from the setting suns, and yet, he knows her in an instant. Would know her anytime, anywhere.

“Una?” he asks incredulously, standing up and stepping forward to see her better.

“Chris.” It’s been so long since he’s seen her, he’s almost forgotten how to read her body language—are her hands twisting together in apprehension or holding her back from reaching out to him? “I would have sent a message, but…”

“Talosians aren’t in contact with Starfleet,” he finishes the sentence for her. “How the hell did you even manage to get here?” 

“I had to pull a few strings,” she says, and the ghost of a smile that plays across her face is so familiar it makes his heart ache. “Commander Spock put in a good word for me, and I may have reminded a few of the higher-ups how we were both responsible for saving all sentient life from being wiped out by a malevolent AI system.” Her self-satisfied smirk hits him with another pang of familiarity. “I’m not saying Starfleet is indebted to me, but…”

“Oh, they are.” He can feel the corners of his mouth lifting in spite of himself, god, he missed her confidence. He missed her.

“Sit down?”

She settles herself onto the rock beside him, crossing her legs and looking out at the pink and orange streaking across the sky. 

“I wanted to come earlier. To Starbase 11. But they said you weren’t taking visitors.”

“Una, I didn’t—”

“I didn’t come here to chastise you, Chris,” she interrupts him. “I get it. I wouldn’t want to see anyone at first either.”

“It wasn’t just that.”

“No?”

“I knew it would happen,” he says, not looking at her. He hears her sharp intake of breath beside him.

“How do you mean?”

“Boreth. When I was retrieving the time crystal. It showed me the future that would unfold if I took it… I couldn’t just walk away from our mission, I _couldn’t_.” He turns to her, feelings tears in his eyes, though he knows his other body, his real body, can’t even produce tears anymore. When he speaks again, it’s quiet, shameful, “Sometimes I wish to god I had just walked away.”

His voice cracks on the last word, Una shifts closer to him and he folds into her, her arms a comforting weight around him as he is suddenly wracked with sobs, weeping openly into her shoulder, soaking her command gold uniform shirt. Not the first time he’s fallen apart over his fate, but the only time he’s had someone to comfort him. On Earth his sorrow crashed through his brain like a relentless storm, but he couldn’t curl up in fetal position and let the tears fall, only blink again and again and again, _no no nono_. And those first few weeks on Talos IV were the goddamn worst of his life, worse than feeling delta rays eating away at his flesh, worse than waking up to nearly unbearable pain and not being able to cry out. When your heart is breaking you need someone to comfort you, and Chris had no one on Talos IV. He mourned himself alone.

Una rubs her hand in slow, gentle circles across his back as he struggles to catch his breath. He swipes at his eyes, mumbles into her shoulder what he’s been thinking for months, first unable and then too ashamed to speak aloud. 

“It’s not fair, Una—how come I had to choose between my happiness and the fate of the entire universe?”

She catches his chin with her fingers, forces his face upward to look into his eyes. 

“You’re right, Chris. It’s not fair. And you’re allowed to be angry, and heartbroken, and wish things had gone differently. No one—no one should be forced to make those choices.”

He drops his head again, this time with relief, presses into her in a silent thank you that he can tell she receives. Only after the suns have fully set and the moon is making its ascent is he ready to speak again.

“I couldn’t see you, after, because… I know we… we never talked about the future, really, but I guess I always thought we both knew we would spend it together.” He laughs, a little bitterly, a little wetly. “I couldn’t see you after that because I knew I had wrecked it for us, Una, I couldn’t bear to imagine you moving on without me.”

Una has seen him cry too many times to count—in their shared quarters nights after missions where they had lost members of the crew, reminiscing the future’s ghosts of a starship he’d once commanded, sometimes during or after sex. Una rarely cries in front of anyone, even him, preferring to be alone, to seek comfort afterwards. But her eyes fill with tears at his words, tears that she impatiently wipes away, blinks her sticky eyelashes and reaches up to rest her palm against his cheek. “I could never move on from you, Chris.”

“Una, if you’re talking about staying here—”

“Hush and let me speak, Captain.”

He can’t help but raise his eyebrows at her tone, the commanding voice she’d use with especially difficult diplomats on their missions and occasionally when she topped him. She giggles at his reaction.

“Sorry, it just slipped out. Anyway, I just meant… I can’t imagine ever staying in one place forever. Kind of the reason I joined Starfleet, you know? But if you, this planet, were my home base… I think I could accept that, couldn’t you?”

“Of course I could, Una. But Talos IV isn’t exactly a planet the Federation is okay with people dropping in and out of.”

She looks like she’s holding back rolling her eyes, but barely. “You know me well enough to know that I don’t give a toss what the Federation is okay with.”

He can’t help himself from grinning at that. “So you’re just going to ignore the, ah, _death penalty_ placed on anyone who comes here?”

__“That ban is only in place because the Federation can’t trust anyone to keep their mouths shut, which I happen to very good at. How many years have I been sitting on the truth of what happened to a certain starship?”_ _

__“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”_ _

__“Exactly,” she said smugly._ _

__“You really do have just about everyone wrapped around your finger.”_ _

__“Why, thank you, Christopher.”_ _

__-_ _

__Chris supposes if he’s going to have someone sleeping over, he should adjust his sleeping quarters to something a bit less “dreary underground cave chic” and spends a couple moments imagining a room similar to the ritzy hotel suite they once spent the night in on Alpha Centauri. Una loves hotels, will spend days in unfamiliar cities just to spend the nights in rooms with fresh sheets, dazzling sights out the windows, and an array of exotic treats in the fridge. She loves the impermanence of it, like she was saying to him earlier, she can’t stay in any one place for too long. But this, Talos IV, this will be her home base, and soon Chris will watch her spread her wings and try not to feel too left behind._ _

__“I like the décor, Chris. Very fancy.”_ _

__He turns. Una is leaning against the doorway, surveying the room with a satisfied expression on her face. She points to the embroidered design on the long white curtains. “Alpha Centuari?”_ _

__He nods as she crosses the room and sits down on the edge of the bed, undoing the laces of her boots and tossing them away. Chris follows her lead, lining his boots up neatly on the floor next to the night stand, watching unabashedly as Una undresses beside him. She slaps gently at his shoulder, lips quirking up, and leans over to help him with his own shirt. Chris orders the lamps off, leaving only the faint light of Talos’s moon shining through the sheer curtains. Una runs her fingers gently over Chris’s bare chest, making him shiver—this was what a body was for._ _

__“Una?”_ _

__“Hm?”_ _

__“You know it’s not—this isn’t what I really look like.”_ _

__She presses a kiss to the back of his neck, tracing her lips down to just behind his clavicle. Her left hand traces the side of his body until it stops over his heart, her palm warm against the rhythmic thumping powered by machine and illusion both._ _

__“Chris, of course I do. I would hold you like this no matter what. I love you for who you are, not what you look like.” He feels smirk into his shoulder as her hand shifts downward and pinches at his nipple. “Of course, this all is just an added bonus.”_ _

__He turns his head to the side so he can see her, she leans forward and kisses his lips softly, slowly, then pulls back to look at him. “You’re going to be okay, babe.”_ _

__For the first time since his injury, he believes it._ _

__

__Una make a little noise of protest as he turns around in bed. “I’m the big spoon in this relationship, Christopher.”_ _

__He smiles at her, tracing a calloused palm over the curve of her waist. “Just for tonight, sweetheart.”_ _

__She gives an exaggerated sigh through a smile, kisses him on the lips once more before rolling over and pressing her back against his chest. Chris snakes his arms around her, buries his face in the crook of her neck, breathes her in._ _

__The sheets and pillows may be no more than an upgraded figment of his imagination, and his body may be a lie in order to survive an unbearable truth, but for now Chris doesn’t worry about that. Instead, he tightens his arms around Una’s warm body and clings to her, his reality._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Titled after & includes lyrics from the song "The End of All Things" by Panic at the Disco, which always makes me emotional


End file.
